It’s not tech in general that’s slower moving, but rather that software development is slower moving today (in my opinion).

To launch a minor feature at a modern tech company you need to:

- pitch your idea to your manager and get alignment

- get approval from your skip manager and buy-in from your product managers

- align your idea with your partner team’s roadmap

- go through a design review with your team

- go through a design review with your principal engineers

- write a task breakdown

- actually write the code

     - write tests for the code

     - write integration tests for the code

     - fix build issues

     - push multiple code reviews and respond to comments

     - whoops you need to rebase and that shared component you used just changed it’s interface yesterday breaking your tests

     - your integration tests failed in preprod blocking your coworker’s launch, better fix that

- a couple rounds of AppSec, UX and PM review

- time to coordinate the launch of your feature toggle with 6 partner teams

- oops there was a minor bug you need to roll back your feature and resolve it overnight

How much of this overhead existed in the 90s?

If a single lone genius like Ken Thompson or John Carmack wants to write a new feature or product and get it out to customers they have 10x+ the work today (at a modern tech company).